‘In quoting others, we cite ourselves’
We come of age in the early 1980s so it is natural that it is a period of unparalleled musical relevance … Pink Martini ruled the sounds at the melting pot wedding …
Party of one: Restaurants are catering to a growing number of solo diners AP
More slick, squalid spycraft in ‘Slow Horses’; Nicole Kidman plays Nantucket royalty in ‘The Perfect Couple’; the journey from comedian to wartime leader in ‘The Zelensky Story’; Enjoyable crime podcast caper ‘Only Murders in the Building’ returns for season 4; Jeff Goldblum brings zany charisma to Greek myth series ‘Kaos’; season 2 ups the action in Tolkien prequel ‘The Rings of Power’; epic saga ‘Pachinko’ returns for an exquisite season 2 — reviews by Dan Einav and Fiona Sturges
Last year we bid farewell to Succession, Barry and Top Boy, fell hard for Beef, Colin From Accounts and Blue Lights. The next 12 months should help us move on – the potential impact of 2023’s writers’ strike notwithstanding – as early hits like World War II epic Masters of the Air and Mr and Mrs Smith, Prime Video’s intoxicating mix of witty marital drama and zippy espionage caper, are already proving.
Ahead is a hotly-anticipated new run of Squid Game on Netflix, a third season of Industry, a sci-fi prequel in Dune: Prophecy, Colin Farrell in DC spinoffPenguin, and The Franchise, the latest from telly genius Armando Iannucci – among many other potentially binge-worthy offerings. But there’s only so many hours in the day and you can’t spend all of them on the sofa. Here’s our guide to the shows most worthy of your time.
Vulture on the latest streaming series
Why conservatives should prize eccentricity
Do aphrodisiacs work? What the science says
H.G. WELLS WROTE A STORY ABOUT THIS: Researchers Make Skin Invisible With Common Food Dye.
Potential breakthrough found for incurable prostate cancer
Brad Pitt and George Clooney 60 is the new 30!
Daniela Hodrová (1946-2024)
Czech author Daniela Hodrová has passed away; see, for example, the Novinky.cz report.
The only one of her books under review at the complete review is her A Kingdom of Souls, but I have the full City of Torment (and Prague. I see a city ...) and expect to get to them
Few poets have suffered more from the early overestimation of critics than Delmore Schwartz. He never quite recovered
99 percent of ancient texts have been lost to history. What’ was lost for millennia may now be found... more »
New Books
Marilynne Robinson, pillar of moral seriousness, takes on the book of Genesis. Surprisingly, the result is dogmatism... more »
Essays & Opinions
A real reader, insisted Nabokov, is a rereader. He was wrong, and so is the high-minded horde of rereading evangelists... more »
Articles of Note
Remembering Mortimer J. Adler, an intellectually dazzling figure who managed to get all the important things wrong... more »
New Books
Some academics insist that children’s literaturecan be written only by children. "Those academics, incidentally, are off their rockers"... more »
Essays & Opinions
C.L.R. James planned a short trip to “dreadful” America and stayed for 15 years, even as his distaste for U.S. politics grew... more »
Articles of Note
The subtle genius of Katharine White. The longtime New Yorker editor was remarkable for being unremarkable... more »
New Books
Lead and Zinc Ores of Northumberland and Alston Moor does not sound like children’s literature — yet it was for W.H. Auden... more »
Essays & Opinions
Dickens was a scoundrel; Tolstoy an exploitative sex addict; Alice Walker an anti-Semite. Still, read them ... more »
Articles of Note
Invention of a status symbol. How a few lines from a Bruce Chatwin book gave rise to an iconic product... more »
New Books
What is most indelible about Simone Weil is her mix of cosmic empathy and aggressive intolerance... more »
Essays & Opinions
In praise of reference books. The best way to satisfy a young and weird mind’s desire for useless knowledge... more »
Articles of Note
Christopher Isherwood was not keen to dine with Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne – “Mrs. Misery and Mr. Know-All”... more »
New Books
Monstrous motherhood. What can we learn from women who’ve abandoned their children?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Grades at American universities are so inflated they’ve become meaningless. Time to do away with them altogether... more »
Articles of Note
Does a paleontological site in North Dakota contain evidence of one of the most dramatic events in the history of the planet?... more »
New Books
What it means to be a stone. Rocks can behave in ways that defy our imagination, and increase our access to awe... more »
Essays & Opinions
Is AI-generated writing mimicking us, or are we imitating AI? Resisting the allure of maximal clarity and minimal idiosyncrasies... more »
Articles of Note
Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky are unlikely titans of Russian literature. Not everyone is pleased... more »
New Books
We are all storytellers, certain assumptions embedded in our discursive maneuvers. Has that ability degraded?... more »
Essays & Opinions
Behold the strange and wondrous world of plankton, a vast ecosystem giving rise to the idea of the ocean... more »
Articles of Note
People have always been anxious about their health. But their anxiety reflects the preoccupations and peculiarities of each era... more »
New Books
Some writers are at their best when denouncing idiocy rather than praising greatness. Consider Christopher Hitchens ... more »
Essays & Opinions
A funny thing happened to Marxist political philosophers. When they stripped away the BS, there was nothing left but liberalism ... more »
Articles of Note
“Graffti inserts itself like the blade of a knife between creation and destruction, between publicity and furtiveness, between word and image”... more »
Essays & Opinions
Whitewashing Nietzsche. Generations of academics have tried to argue away his appeal to young men... more »
Articles of Note
Battles over money. Allegations of racism. A chair ousted. When a college English department self-destructs... more »